Kaosball Review

Oh how I wish I had kickstarted Kaosball. I had KSed some RPGs but was loathe to pay the postage for a boardgame plus couldn’t be sure it would be any good before it came out. However if I had realised how much stuff I could get free plus the huge discount on teams…So anyway, having missed it I picked it up plus 5 more teams (mostly as presents)

In the Box

4 Teams of 13 players, a board and score board, magnetic upgrade cards and magnetic team boards, star players (8 figures and cards), action cards and the rulebook. As usual, a lot of high quality stuff for your money.

Setup

Pick teams. Done. You can also do bidding for upgrades and stars but that’s really part of the game. I guess one downside is that it’s almost possible to lose at this point.

In Play

On your turn you play an action card or move a figure. Action cards let you move more, or get small boosts. Players score by picking up the ball and then starting your turn in one of the scoring spaces. Players can move, tackle and attack. The tricky bit which I didn’t see mentioned in reviews is the tackle zone. When you walk up to another player to attack they get a choice to attack or tackle you first. This wouldn’t be an issue but resolution is by playing cards. There are only 6 (7 if you count cheat card) different cards, and you can’t repeat values. So to successfully tackle someone you need to win two card contests in succession. However because you can’t repeat cards if you burn cards at the start of a quarter you have nothing to play later on. And at 9 cards played the quarter is over. So card management plays a big part in the game. This can mean that a bad card draw messes up a huge quarter. But you can get points for having the most kills so sometimes it pays to partly ignore the ball and beat up the opposing team members. It feels like it plays quick but with 4 quarters it actually takes a while – usually about 2 hours. 3 players doesn’t seem to take much longer than 2 tho and works well.

Summary

This game is a lot of fun. The teams play differently despite having similar stats and one special ability each. It never seems to be taking long until you look at the clock! It’s not as in depth as something like bloodbowl but it just seems to take less time. Probably because you only move one player each round, not 11!